Alleged leader of mosque bombing could be threatening figure

FILE - In this Aug. 15, 2017 file photo, Law enforcement officials investigate an explosion at the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minn. Federal authorities said Tuesday, March 13, 2018, they have charged three men from rural central Illinois with the bombing of a Minnesota mosque last year and one of the men told an investigator the goal of the attack was to "scare" Muslims out of the United States. A statement from the U.S. attorney's office in Springfield, Illinois, says the men also are suspected in the attempted bombing of an abortion clinic in November.David Joles / AP

CLARENCE, Ill. — A former sheriff’s deputy and purported ringleader in the bombing of a Minnesota mosque emerges in court documents as a sometimes-threatening figure with anti-government views who also wrote books and attracted others into his shadowy group.

Michael Hari, 47, allegedly intended for the attack to scare Muslims into leaving the U.S. He and two associates were charged Tuesday with travelling from rural Clarence, Illinois, about 120 miles south of Chicago, to carry out the Aug. 5 pipe-bomb assault on the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minnesota.

The explosion caused a damaging fire just as morning prayers were about to begin, but no one was hurt.

Even before his arrest, the self-described entrepreneur and watermelon farmer had a background that included working in law enforcement, floating ideas for a border wall with Mexico, fleeing with his daughters to Central America during a custody dispute and suing the federal government for allegedly cutting in on his food-safety business.

Court papers say Hari promised his accomplices $18,000 for their participation in the mosque attack. But the complaints in the case do not portray him as well off, citing an informant who said Hari frequently stayed at his parents’ home because he had no running water or electricity.

Hari describes some of his political views in a federal lawsuit he filed last month against the Department of Agriculture in which he complains it was cutting in on his food-safety certification business, Equicert.

“The People of the United States have rejected the Marxist doctrine that the government shall own the means of production,” he wrote.

Under the screen name “Illinois Patriot,” Hari posted 19 videos to YouTube in the past two months, most of them anti-government monologues delivered in a smooth, matter-of-fact voice. He wears a balaclava that obscures all but his eyes.

In a March 11 video titled “A Cry for Liberty,” Hari criticizes the Justice Department as “a political animal,” and calls the government “completely illegitimate.”

He spoke to the Chicago Tribune last year for a story on Illinois residents seeking contracts to help build the border wall with Mexico championed by President Donald Trump. Hari said he had drafted a $10 billion construction plan.

In addition to Hari, authorities charged Joe Morris, 22, and Michael McWhorter, 29. All three men live in Clarence, a community with a population of just a few dozen people encircled by farm fields. During a reporter’s visit on Wednesday, at least four homes displayed Confederate flags — one flying high atop a flagpole in a front yard.

It isn’t clear why the men targeted a mosque in Minnesota, though Al-Farooq had been in the headlines in recent years.

A group of young Minnesota men who were convicted of conspiring to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State Group had frequented the mosque. A young woman and at least one of the men who successfully got to Syria also worshipped there. Mosque leaders were never accused of any wrongdoing.

Hari fled the U.S. in the early 2000s to live in Mexico and then the small South American nation of Belize, taking his two teenage daughters with him for fear his ex-wife would gain custody, according to media reports of legal proceedings against him after he returned to the U.S. in 2006. He was convicted of child abduction and given probation.

The case put Hari on television.

Dr. Phil McGraw of the “Dr. Phil” talk show used an investigator to help track down Hari in Belize, shortly before Hari came back to face charges of abducting his kids.

He wrote a handful of self-published books, including essays on religion. One was titled “Resurgence: More than Conquerors.” Another was “Beowulf: A Novel of the Norsemen,” which was listed as the first in a series.

Hari belonged to the Old German Baptist Brethren, a religious sect that shares some beliefs with the Amish, although its followers do not spurn modern technology, according to 2006 coverage of his trial published in the News-Gazette in Champaign, about 30 miles south of Clarence.

Some of Hari’s neighbours told Champaign television station WCIA that Hari frightened them. One neighbour said Hari gave her “the heebie-jeebies.”

His criminal record includes a charge of assaulting a neighbour who entered his property in July, when he allegedly held the man down and pointed a pellet gun at his head. Then in February, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives received an anonymous tip about explosives on that neighbour’s property.

Authorities found explosives, including a pipe bomb, which McWhorter said he, Hari and Morris planted to discredit the neighbour who reported the assault, according to court documents. Hari allegedly called in the phoney tip.

In a March 10 video, just days before his arrest, Hari went to YouTube again and posted as “Illinois Patriot,” saying FBI and local law enforcement investigators had “run wild” and were terrorizing Clarence.

He asked “freedom-loving people everywhere to come and help us.”

Hari was raised near Champaign and went to graduate school in criminal justice at the University of Central Texas, now known as Texas A&M University-Central Texas, where he took courses in security-related construction, the Tribune reported.

The three men are also suspected in the attempted bombing of an abortion clinic on Nov. 7 in Champaign, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Springfield. In that attack, a pipe bomb was thrown inside but failed to go off.

A tip in December led authorities to investigate the three men, after a person sent the local sheriff photos of guns and bomb-making material inside Hari’s parents’ home. In January, a second informant told authorities that the men had carried out the mosque bombing and the failed clinic attack, according to the complaints.

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Tarm reported from Chicago. Forliti reported from Minneapolis. News researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York City also contributed to this report.